Mulroney... the nightmare now 25 years old

Look at that face, look at that glee, look ... he's laughing at you and me.
Compelling for sure, regrettable too; it's been 25 years since he first came to screw me, and you.

A full thirty-three years since he first appeared on the scene, it was then that he taught us our politics could be manipulated by men without principles, dignity, hubris, or a conscience.

Malice and enmity were his game, we all suffered under his Tory reign.

Isn't it funny and sad so little has changed?

You know our world is imperfect when...

We poor Canadians certainly face many problems. A broken parliamentary system, rife with erratic and self-serving leaders. Endemic abuse at the hands of usury bankers. An inherent inability to provide fairness and justice for all. A spill-over of undue and banal US influences that leave the kind of taint only Hannibal Lechter could love. Too many petulant and misguided wieners. And, too many idiots!

These, and a myriad of other challenges, are undoubtedly concerning - at least to a certain extent. But before we start feeling too sorry for ourselves; read this item from South Africa:

TB Patients Sell Sputum to Grant Fraudsters

September 14, 2009 - by Brenda Nkuna

Cape Town — Desperate for an income, unemployed people are paying TB patients for sputum samples so they can dupe doctors into getting them onto the social grant system.

TB-ridden residents in Khayelitsha charge R50 to R100 for sputum samples in a ruse which involves 'sputum sellers' keeping a stash of sample bottles smuggled out of government clinics which are then handed, with the infected sample, to unsuspecting health workers.

Using the infected TB sample, healthy people get a card from the clinic indicating they have TB and use this to fraudulently obtain a temporary disability grant ....

Enquiries in Khayelitsha quickly revealed three TB infected residents willing to sell their sputum in order for fraudulent grants to be obtained.

This reporter approached one of them, a 54-year-old man who legitimately receives a disability grant for his illness, who sold two bottles with sputum samples for at total of R50.

He said on average he made about R500 per month selling his sputum to people wanting to fraudulently obtain grants.

But he said business was "not good" because so many people were infected with TB in the township, which meant he had a lot of competition.

Paid R50, the man, who cannot be named in order to protect his identity, provided two samples of fresh sputum, each in a health department bottle obtained from a stack he kept in his bedroom.

Going to the Nolungile clinic in Site C, Khayelitsha, for a TB test, this reporter was given two bottles by a health worker who said a sputum sample in each bottle was required for the tests.

The health worker did not insist the sputum be coughed up in front of them so it was easy to swap the bottles with those which contained the purchased samples.

Fortunately for the sputum seller, but unluckily for this 'client' the samples came back negative, indicating that the man who sold the sputum had likely been taking his TB medication.

.... some TB patients deliberately neglected to take their medication in order to remain on the grant system, in effect trading their health for money. .... [giving rise to incidences whereby] patients abandoning their six-month course of medication led to multiple drug resistant (MDR) TB or even extreme drug resistant (XDR) TB.

The World Health Organization's Global TB Report 2008 ranks South Africa fourth in the world for TB infection, with an incidence rate of 940 cases per 100 000 people - a major increase from 338 per 100 000 population in 1998.

The Western Cape health department said there were 50,156 TB cases in the province in 2008...

*** Don't know about you, but I am starting to believe that maybe (just maybe) the world is a relative place. And that, on any given day, we should all remember that some (though not all) of our problems aren't really all that bad?

In Brad Wall's Saskatchewan anything is possible!

Saskatchewan has many things going for it, but this development speaks to the fact that under Premier Wall the insignificant is ascendant.

"Premier Brad Wall says the Town of Martensville, a bedroom community of Saskatoon, will officially get city status in November."

In Wall's World, apparently, the Sask Party thinks it can keep the Saskatchewan public distracted from real and pressing issues by engaging in empty and absurd exercises like granting a de-facto Saskatoon suburb 'city status'. At best a town, Martensville is nothing more than a faceless home developers dream of cookie cutting heaven. Really, it's nothing more than a burb where relatively affluent worker bees from Saskatoon go to sleep. Hardly a city!

However, that doesn't stop other boosters from overplaying the significance of the event:

"There's a great significance to yet another city in Saskatchewan because in the national consciousness, Saskatchewan is a place that time forgot - ... " says Bill Waiser, a professor in the history department at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

In fairness, Prof, Waiser knows not of what he speaks. And it's not his fault, he's been brainwashed by living most (if not all?) of his life in a province where a community must only have a population of 5,000 ... to get city status.

No matter what the new official moniker implies, Martensville is, and will remain, nothing more than a burb.

A new City?

Absurd!